MANHATTAN — Matthew Badger, the Manhattan dad whose three young daughters died in a Christmas Day fire at their mother's Stamford, Conn. home, took the initial legal steps to potentially sue over the deadly incident, according to the New York Post.
Badger filed papers in Stamford Probate Court recently looking to administer the girls' estates for a potential "wrongful-death claim," the paper reported.
Lily, 9, and 7-year-old twins Sarah and Grace died in the blaze along with their grandparents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson. The girls' mother Madonna Badger, a Manhattan ad executive, survived the fire with her boyfriend, Michael Borcina, a contractor who was doing renovations on the house, which had no working smoke detectors, the Post said.
The two have been questioned by police during the ongoing investigation.
Matthew Badger's lawyer Richard Emery told the Post he "has no intention of suing his ex-wife." But he had harsh words for Borcina.
"The fact is that Borcina was the contractor on the job. He was aware of the dangers, or should have been aware of dangers, that a civilian would have been unaware of," Emery told the Post.
"The fact that kids were living in this house was unbelievable . . . I don’t hold Madonna Badger responsible for that at all because I can’t imagine she would have understood the immediacy of the dangers."
Officials said Borcina had put ashes — not yet snuffed out — from the fireplace into the trash, investigators said. They also learned after the blaze that the house had no certificate of occupancy.
Emery told the paper that Badger, who is starting a foundation in his daughters' memory for school arts programs, would channel any wrongful-death suit proceeds to the charity.
Lawyers for Madonna Badger and Borcina had no comment, telling the Post they hadn't seen the probate court filing.
